Back in the U.S.A., Republican critics of President Barack Obama’s handling of the Ukraine conflict — as well as the way he played the “red line” card in Syria — are seizing on accounts suggesting that the Obama administration’s sanctions are feckless in the face of a determined adversary, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The White House has dispatched Vice President Joe Biden to Poland and Lithuania to assuage the concerns of Russian-bordering states as Putin claims a peninsula. Biden, announcing that Russia faces “more than just sanctions,” told reporters in Warsaw today that the U.S. is considering rotating U.S. forces to the Baltics as part of expanded training exercises.

The idea that politics stops at water’s edge in matters of international conflict seems to have been shelved. One won’t find a lot on the White House twitter accounts about any of this. It’s been a while since communications czar Dan Pfeiffer challenged Obama’s critics for tracing current problems overseas to the fatal attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

GOP criticism of Pres Obama jumped the shark today when they started saying Benghazi is one of the reasons for what is happening in Crimea — Dan Pfeiffer (@pfeiffer44) March 4, 2014

Pfeiffer also wondered, by the numbers, how the tide of Republican criticism for the president measures against the president’s own criticism for Putin:

At this stage, the Republicans say, Putin is winning more than a PR war.

Hats off to Putin’s political machine garnering 97% of the vote — not as good as Kim Jong-Un and Saddam Hussein though. #rigged — Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) March 17, 2014

A lot of the White House’s social media of late has been devoted to promoting the Affordable Care Act, the political relations war on the home front. The impression left by all of this is of a White House undaunted by the commentaries of McCain, Graham and company. At 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they’re still digging out of a snow storm.